Professional Waiter Job Description Template

Waiters perform a variety of tasks that ensure that a restaurant provides good customer service and meals to customers. They deliver food, ring up checks, clear tables and generally make sure that customers have a good experience with both the food and the atmosphere.

In the skills section of your waiter job description, you’ll want to highlight that your ideal candidate is friendly, a quick problem solver and someone who can handle a little bit of manual labor while carrying trays around and serving drinks and food.

Waiters should be polite, helpful and friendly. They should be very efficient and have good stamina, excellent communication skills and a good memory. Waiters should be diplomatic and patient when dealing with complaints and issues that arise. Use the example below to get a better idea of what to include in your own waiter job description.

Waiter Job Summary

As a waiter at our neighborhood restaurant, you’ll be an integral part of a small, committed team that prides itself on delivering standout experiences to customers. Beyond just taking orders and interacting with guests and chefs, you’ll get the opportunity to set the tone and atmosphere on the floor (think selecting the playlist of the evening, designing the specials board, and keeping your area in tip-top shape). This is a great role for any food lover who wants to put their strong communication skills and positive attitude to work at a restaurant that truly believes that good food is key to a good mood.

Job Responsibilities

Greet customers as they are seated at their tables and help them choose a meal that they will enjoy

Take orders from customers for drinks, food and dessert and relay those orders to the kitchen staff to ensure that they are created correctly

Memorize and present daily specials to customers to help sell new menu items or seasonal specialties

Fill in for the host or hostess on busy nights, greet customers and lead them to their tables, provide them with menus and make sure they have silverware and napkins

Know the ingredients of the meals on the menu and how they are cooked, and use descriptive words to encourage customers to order them

Remove used plates, cups, silverware and trash from the table after the customer leaves and prepare the table for the next customer

Clean the restaurant after customers are gone, vacuuming, mopping, sweeping, taking out the trash and checking bathrooms

Stock waiter service area with supplies such as tableware, linens and coffee

Job Skills & Qualifications

Reqiured:

Must be 21 years or over to serve alcohol to customers

High school diploma or equivalent

Must be able to life 20 pounds on a regular basis

Excellent communication skills

Preferred:

Previous experience as a waiter

Ability to work nights and weekends

Experience with POS terminals and credit card processing machines

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Waiter Job Responsibilities

The job responsibilities section of your waiter job description is the heart of the listing, providing the core for describing the actual day-to-day requirements of the job. Since this section is the weightiest part of the description, it needs to be well-written and full of relevant specifics about the position.

Taking the time to craft an outstanding job responsibilities section by writing a succinct, bullet-pointed list is sure to help you find the right candidates for the job. If the description is accurate, it helps applicants self-select in terms of deciding whether they can see themselves in the job and perform it based on the skills they already possess.

When you write the bullet points of this section, use strong action verbs to give your waiter job description more impact. When applicants read vivid descriptive statements, they can get a better feel for what the job actually entails on a daily basis. A best practice for painting this picture is to use about six bullet points at a minimum, eight at a maximum.

The following list gives some common examples of waiter job responsibilities

Welcome customers and accurately take their food and drink orders

Take dietary restrictions into consideration, including allergies and intolerances

Deliver food and drinks in a timely fashion and check back on customers

Waiter Job Specifications

The waiter job description also includes a job qualifications and skills section, which helps applicants to quickly determine whether they have the baseline requirements necessary to apply for the job. Despite the fact that this is usually among the shortest sections of the overall description, generally about four bullet points or thereabouts, it plays an important role. That’s because it will direct candidates who aren’t qualified for the position to refrain from applying for the job, thus decreasing your time in scanning resumes that aren’t a good fit.

As you think about the job qualifications and skills to include in this section of your waiter job description, consider educational requirements as well as soft skills and personality traits. It’s a good idea to have a mix of prerequisites that are essential to performing the job as well as some preferred skills, ones that a lack of which wouldn’t prevent an otherwise qualified candidate from getting hired. That way, you can increase your hiring pool to candidates who may excel even if they don’t have all the exact qualifications you include on your list.

Here is a list of waiter job specifications you may want to include in your description:

High school diploma Personable and customer-service oriented Able to work well under pressure and effectively multi-task in busy environment At least one year of relevant work experience preferred